John F. Kennedy Jr., Heir To a Formidable Dynasty

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

Published: July 19, 1999

WASHINGTON, July 18—
John F. Kennedy Jr., a scion of the nation's most celebrated political dynasty, was reported lost and presumed dead in an accident that resounded this weekend with echoes of the family's many misfortunes.

Mr. Kennedy, 38, has been missing since Friday night after the plane he was flying to a cousin's wedding on Cape Cod failed to arrive on Martha's Vineyard. His disappearance in the prime of his life, like the deaths of his father, two uncles, an aunt and two cousins before him, only added to the perception that his larger-than-life family has been besieged by a near-biblical blight.

Mr. Kennedy, son of the 35th President, was touched by both the Kennedy charisma and its curse. The public ached in 1963 as it watched him, in his blue dress coat and short pants, salute his slain father. It cheered as he emerged with his dazzling bride from their secret wedding in 1996. And as he sought a measure of privacy even while forsaking a career in law or government for a role in publishing, the public never ceased dwelling on his future and the swings of his family's fortunes between triumph and disaster.

Guiding his life was a scriptural passage, Luke 12:48, that was voiced frequently by his grandmother Rose and paraphrased by his father: ''Of those to whom much is given, much is required.'' Mr. Kennedy taught English to underprivileged children, aided people who were homeless and disabled, and was a patron of the arts.

But like many sons of famous fathers, Mr. Kennedy still seemed to be searching for his place in the public constellation, the expectations for him as great as his father's legend was gripping. And he was conscious of his burden as an American icon.

''It's hard for me to talk about a legacy or a mystique,'' Mr. Kennedy said in a 1993 interview. ''It's my family. The fact that there have been difficulties and hardships, or obstacles, makes us closer.''

He was most recently founder and editor of George, a glossy journal of politics, but some of his family's admirers still hoped his venture into publishing was merely a prologue to a career in politics.

While he helped the Democratic Party raise money, he never ran for office. He made his political debut at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, where he introduced his uncle Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Invoking his father's inaugural speech, which called a generation to public service, he received a two-minute standing ovation.

Cameras swarmed after him wherever he went, whether it was as a toddler playing under his father's desk in the White House, or as a young lawyer and avid athlete who was often photographed shirtless. In 1988, People magazine called him ''the sexiest man alive.''

John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. was born on Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 25, 1960, just three weeks after his father, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was elected President. He was the first infant to live in the White House since 1893.

President Kennedy's funeral was held on his son's third birthday. In one indelible moment of family heartache and American history, the boy stood outside St. Matthew's Cathedral in Washington with his mother and sister, raising his hand in a salute as he squinted into the sun while his father's coffin rolled by. His mother, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, had leaned down and whispered to him in advance to salute, a gesture the boy had seen many times as military escorts greeted the Commander in Chief.

After his father's death, his mother moved the family to an apartment on the Upper East Side of New York. Security was always a major preoccupation. When her son was 6, Mrs. Kennedy commented on his maturity, adding, ''Sometimes it almost seems that he is trying to protect me instead of just the other way around.''

He attended a Catholic elementary school and was so rambunctious that Secret Service agents gave him the code name Lark. But his mother worried about her children's safety, especially after Robert F. Kennedy, their uncle, was assassinated in 1968.

''If they're killing Kennedys, then my children are targets,'' Jacqueline Kennedy said at the time. ''I want to get out of this country.''

On Oct. 20, 1968, she married Aristotle Socrates Onassis, a Greek shipping magnate who was 29 years her senior, in part because of his ability to provide the family security.

Mrs. Onassis, one of the world's most fabled women, sought desperately to give her children a normal life. When John was mugged in Central Park at age 13, his mother said it was a good experience for him.

According to family files recently made public, Mrs. Onassis told her bodyguards that her son ''must be allowed to experience life,'' and that ''unless he is allowed freedom, he'll be a vegetable.''

As an adult, John made a point of taking public transportation in New York.

''I have a pretty normal life, surprisingly,'' he told Larry King.

He attended Collegiate School for Boys in New York but enrolled in 11th grade at Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass. Breaking with family tradition, he went to Brown University instead of Harvard, graduating in 1983. He majored in American history and was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.